


The Power to Sift

by voleuse



Category: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 21:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8912605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: She’d like to be at one with her new self, but memories sit in her like eyes.Or, as jedibuttercup requested, “Rita remembers it, too.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jedibuttercup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/gifts).



> Set immediately after the movie.

**i. wings quiver with great precision**  
The warmth of Cage’s presence melted to a faint memory as Rita ran, every footfall dragging in the kerosene sludge that surrounded them. She ducked a half-second before a Mimic stabbed past her, the insect skitter of its speech peppering her like shrapnel. Something exploded--outside, or closer?--and she didn’t hear the next Mimic in time to dodge. Pain slashed down her arm, across her ribs, and she fell face-first, her knees skidding against crushed glass even as the Mimic rolled over her.

The sludge pulsed around her body, suddenly tasting like metal and searing like acid, and she grew cold, too cold, and--

\--she blinked.

The rustling around her was the familiar morning sounds of her squad: Oke humming as he dressed, Joaquin clearing his throat after a stolen morning smoke, Song snapping out crisp corners as she remade her bunk. Rita took inventory of her body, twitching her extremities and taking a deep, stinging breath. She rolled, tugging the curtain of her bunk back.

“Morning, Rita.” Joaquin tossed something at her, and she caught it, unthinking. “One down to D-Day.”

She looked at the packet rattling in her hand, an Altoids tin, and she knew before flipping it open that it held three chalky mints and three caffeine pills. “Breakfast of champions,” she mouthed along, even as Joaquin sang it out. 

“You okay?” Oke asked. Rita looked up at him; he was smiling, a towel draped over his shoulder. “You got that look again.”

“It’s fine.” Rita stood and stretched, tucking the tin into her pocket. “Nothing to worry about.”

Oke nodded and hustled off, and Rita ran her hand down her left arm, feeling only the ghost-pain of being reset once again.

 

 **ii. another of the given forms**  
This was the thing that still angered Rita--the “limited training” the soldiers were given, as Cage had crowed about over the news, thanks to the miracle of the exo-jacket. As if the knowledge of how to run, to shoot, to leap, to crush with the machine hadn’t been carved into her body by talons, habituated into her blood. 

It was why her squad trained five times as much as any of the others, and why she learned not to wince at the _Full Metal Bitch_ scrawled across billboards and warehouses. She had died more than three hundred times to earn that praise, and if withholding smiles and grinding training into muscle memory kept her team alive, she’d wear the epithet like a badge.

She was the first to the simulator every morning, and the last to leave every night. The whir and crash of metal against concrete soothed her like a lullaby, and she closed her eyes as she stretched in the center of the space. Push-ups, to get her blood pumping, then she held the pose, shifting her mind to the peace that preceded every battle.

Then, footsteps. Cage. She eased into cobra pose as she looked up and he was...wrong. The uniform, the tension of his shoulders. “Yes?” She stood up, feeling unbalanced. “What do you want?”

And he smiled and laughed, and something like relief rippled through her.

“You remember,” she murmured.

He nodded, and stepped a half-measure closer. “I was hoping you did, too.”

She cast her thoughts back to before the blink. “The explosion--that was the Omega?”

“It was close,” he said. “But I had a grenade. Its blood must have--”

“Yeah.” Rita rubbed her left arm again, idly. “Both of us, but none of the others.”

Cage looked over his shoulder, waving at her squad as they stared. “They’re all right, though. I walked past them as I came in.”

She scanned over his uniform, spotless, and his shoes, shined. “And why are you here, officially?”

“Oh, well,” Cage said, “I’m actually an officer of public affairs. The General asked me to bring a team to the invasion, give the people a glimpse of the war as it’s won, that sort of thing.”

Rita crossed her arms. “A little easier when the battle’s already over, isn’t it?” She managed to infuse her voice with scorn.

Cage spread his hands, gesturing to the machines surrounding them. “Maybe I could call the cameras over here? Give the people a glimpse of the Angel of Verdun and her elite squad as they prepare for battle?”

“I suppose,” Rita said, rolling her eyes, “as long as you never call me that again where I can hear you.”

“Deal,” Cage said, and he snapped his fingers, and a spotlight blinded her.

 

**iii. leave each thought in its old place**

The battle at Normandy was nothing like her past battles, not even Verdun. Rita’s squad was at the tip of the spear, but the Mimics--mere hundreds, rather than tens of thousands--emerged from their burrows at half-speed, spitting sharp and dying quick. When she looked over at Cage, he seemed rattled, and she couldn’t decide whether it was for the cameras or not. 

“What did you expect?” she asked him, during the lull of an ammo and battery check. The cameras were being reloaded, and he was spit-polishing the metal of his exo-jacket. 

“What do you--” He stopped. “We went to London before the battle started, that last time.”

“Yes.” She tilted her head. “Did we fight through this together?”

Cage nodded, then his gaze darted over her shoulder. “That looks familiar. Duck right and roll,” he said, then he was doing it, shouting for the camera crew to go to ground as a Mimic sliced through the air where their squad had been. Rita began firing only a second after he did, and the Mimic crashed nose-first, tumbling to a halt right in front of the camera, which was already back to recording.

Rita looked at Cage, catching her breath, and he was grinning. “Couldn’t have done that better if we’d story-boarded it.” He caught her glance. “What?

“I’m going to have to apologize to Carter,” she muttered. “I must have been insufferable.”

 

 **iv. she cannot manage even resignation without a show of grace**  
Back in London, they filmed a post-victory interview, and it seemed natural to go out for drinks with Cage afterward. The pub, though, felt almost too expansive after years of close quarters and drop ships, and Rita desperately wanted to be wearing armor instead of the camera-ready knit dress they’d persuaded her to wear.

She did, however, feel entirely comfortable with the martinis that appeared a few minutes after they sat. The server murmured, “my sister was at Verdun,” and Cage thanked him while Rita tried deploying an awkward smile. She sipped her martini--stronger than she usually had it, and dirty--and when she looked up at Cage, he was staring at her like she was a miracle.

She set her glass down, wondering if that was the way she had looked at Hendricks, all those times before the last. “How many?” she asked.

“How many times what?” he replied, but he looked down, away from her. He knew. 

She asked again anyway. “How many times did you watch me die?”

“Does it matter?” He leaned forward, his voice losing the brightness of his interview mode. “Because I won’t have to watch you die ever again.” He covered one of her hands with his, and she didn’t mind it. 

“Let’s hope,” she replied. And she rose her glass for a toast.

**Author's Note:**

> Title, summary, and headings adapted from Jana Prikryl’s “The Moth.”


End file.
